standardization of environmental data and information - International ...

detritus in the oceans. Smith agreed that bacteria were essential to the
knowledge of ecosystem function, but their role in understanding mining
impact was another issue. With a view to keeping the scale of investigation
at a reasonable level, the contractors could not be asked to do too much.
There was a limit to what was reasonable, and it was clearly a tighter limit
than what scientists would like to have done.
Chemical analysis and sample processing
Smith said that in certain places, in France at one time and still in
some parts of the United States, sorting centers were maintained to
standardize and streamline the processing of material such as macrofaunal
samples. A group of people with the appropriate equipment and expertise
would efficiently sort samples and return them to the laboratory that had
collected them. Either the government supported the center financially or,
in the United States, the collector paid the company that did the sorting. He
saw this as one possible way of streamlining or increasing the efficiency of
sample processing and also of promoting standardization. If one laboratory
was responsible for doing a certain difficult chemical analysis, for example a
trace-metal analysis, or one laboratory or location was responsible for
sorting macrofaunal samples, the process could be standardized. One way
this approach might work in the seabed context would be for each
contractor to contribute money to maintain a sorting centre that would
process their samples, whether this involved macrofaunal sorting or
chemical analyses. One of the downsides was that it would take some of
the scientific work out of contractors’ hands and put it elsewhere, possibly
in another country, so that contractors would lose some of the opportunity
for training and supporting their own scientists.
One contractor expressed the view that such an approach was
unnecessary. Since everyone used the same equipment, standards and
methods for chemical analysis, there was no need for a central chemical
laboratory. On the other hand, it might be needed if the Authority were to
set up an international research team and its own centre.
Another contractor also disagreed with such an approach, saying
that people in his group were working not just for the contract but also as
scientists. The Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute (KORDI)
was trying to become like the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts and was investing in chemical analysis, which would help in
building its own capacity.
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INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY